The Universal Ideal
by Iris Cornelia Jade
Summary: It's more mysterious than Supernatural, crazier than Homestuck, spans across more countries and universes than Hetalia covers and the Whovians can dream up, and is a mystery even Sherlock couldn't solve. More magical than Harry Potter and more dangerous than the Hunger Games...such is the nature of love. For CftBF Shipping Week 2013.
1. Chapter 1

**SHIPPING WEEK 2013! (insert trumpet fanfare) Can you guys believe we made it this far? For a couple months back there, I thought for sure we were going to fade out...but I feel like, with the Skype and all, we've come back stronger than ever. I'm so proud of you guys, and I really love you all. You'll be in my heart (and my heart will go on and oooo-/shot).**

**So, the format of Shipping Week this time around is that every day, there's an assigned OTP and and assigned BROTP. You're only required to do one, but this time around I've decided to challenge myself in two different ways.**

**1) Every day, I'll do both the OTP and the BROTP. (The OTP will probably be more upfront, though.)**

**2) Every day, I'll try and do a different AU.**

**So, without further ado, I present to my friends, my fellow fanatics, and those that may not know us but are still ready to take a little sojourn into our world-**

_**DAY 1**_

_**OTP: Jortato**_

_**BROTP: Jiris**_

_**AU: Daycare AU**_

* * *

"I don't like this place."

"Jordan!" Squeezing the fist clenched tightly in hers, the junior in high school looked down fondly at three year old clinging to her right hand and keeping his face stoically unemotional. "You haven't even figured out what's inside it yet. You can't draw the conclusion that quickly, can you?"

"Yes I can," he replied, glancing up at his older sister. "Can't you just take us home and take care of us more?"

"No," Snow replied sternly, letting go of the girl holding her right hand and bending down to Jordan's level. "I have to go to school now that break's ended and mom's found a full time job. Besides, App's told you lots of times how awesome this place is, right?"

"Well, yeah," piped up the girl on Snow's other side. Iris, Jordan's twin born just one hour before him, tapped her fingers on her head. "But I think he just says that 'cause he has too 'cause he has his girlfriend."

"Right." Snow laughed. "His four and a half year old girlfriend." She smiled fondly. "Mike's so cute sometimes, isn't he?"

"But we are too, right?" The young three year old grinned, bouncing on the balls of her heels before grabbing Jordan's hand. Snow nodded affirmative and Iris grinned.

"Let's go! I don't wanna be late for our first _official_ day of class, right?"

Ignoring Jordan's incredulous face, which was a rather obvious indication of his distaste for the general idea, Iris dragged her silently protesting twin into the rainbow-roofed building.

* * *

"So, you're the new students, right?" The teacher, who Jordan had finally decided to call 'Miss Happy' due to her overwhelming grin, smiled down at them with bent knees. "Everybody say hi to Mike's little siblings, Jordan and Iris!"

"Hi, Jordan and Iris," chorused the room obediently and admittedly rather monotonously, as if repeating a neverending pattern. The two stood uncomfortably at the head of the large circle of children that encompassed the colorful room. Iris's previous energy had dissipated, and she now bit her lip nervously even as she attempted to stare down the people in the class. Jordan simply moved his gaze over the class, tilting his head slightly as he examined the people in front of him.

There were two girls sitting next to each other, talking quietly and grinning. One of them was sitting next to Jordan's brother, a brown-haired boy with glasses thick for his age named Mike (and affectionately nicknamed Apple and variations thereof). The one of the two girls that was seated also next to Mike then had to be Drift, the girl that their brother had blushingly referred to as his 'girlfriend.'

There were others, and Jordan's eyes scanned over them briefly as he gazed around the circle—a curly brown ponytail, pin-straight dark hair, two Asian girls seated side by side with their heads together, wavy caramel locks, a short little curly bob—

There was a sudden wave of black hair that caught his vision. It was another small Asian girl, methodically picking at the strings of a small toy instrument reminiscent to a guitar. Her focus was pinpointed on the object, a small smile gracing her face—

Well then. Jordan hadn't known many boys with purple streaks in their hair.

And then his gaze continued circling around the group of people.

* * *

Iris was busy, whispering away with two new girls—one with a distinct southern accent and another being one of those two Asian girls. Apple was busy, whispering and giggling with Drift. Jordan had finished his juice box and sandwich. There was still another half hour of snack break left.

He was officially bored.

Slumping onto the floor, he rummaged around until he found a white board and began scribbling randomly over it. Zigzaggy lines. Swirly loops.

He erased it and tried again, drawing a face—a dot, a line, and another dot.

Raising an eyebrow and critiquing it, he decided he liked it. He'd have to trademark it someday so no one stole it.

He saw the girl walking up to sit down beside him out of the corner of his eye halfway through drawing the little circle with a c inside it. Looking up, he watched curiously as the girl with the musical instrument knelt slowly onto the floor beside him, grinning. "Hi."

"Hi," Jordan replied, attempting to rearrange his face into a subtly confused expression. Tate caught it.

"Yeah, usually it's Joan or Sunny or Miss Maya that talks to new people." She shrugged, gripping her guitar-thing tighter. "But Joan and Sunny are talking to your sister and Miss Maya's busy yelling at parents on the telephone so I'm the next replacement!"

"…Okay then." Giving her a blank stare, Jordan turned his gaze toward the instrument that the girl was still lightly fiddling with. "What's that?"

"It's a yook—eh—lay—lee." Scrunching up her face, Tate said it again, to make it more fluid. "Ukelele. At least, Miss Maya says so."

The two simultaneously looked at the teacher, who was currently hissing into the phone about eating finger paint. Tate shrugged.

"So, is there anything you really like doing?"

The boy stared a bit more before moving toward the sizable pile of toys on the side of the room. Tate strode over as well, staring critically over as Jordan dug through it slowly, face scrunched up.

"…Here. Try this?"

Looking up, he saw the girl offer him a small smile as she held out another musical instrument. It looked very similar to the ukulele, but Jordan recognized it from the guitar on the stand in his father's room. It was a smaller version of it—a miniature guitar, a match for the girl's ukulele.

As Jordan grabbed the handle, he decided the bright-eyed girl in front of him deserved a small smile.

* * *

"It's show and teeeeeeeeeeeell daaaaaaaaaaaaay!" Bouncing around her bedroom, Iris raced atop her bunk, pushing on the mattress. "Jordan, you have to help me—I don't know what to bring?"

"It's my show and tell day too," retorted Jordan, motioning to his and Apple's shared bedroom across the hall. "I don't really know what to bring, either."

"Maybe I'll bring something of Snow's," she replied, ignoring the statement except for a sympathetic smile. "Hey, what about this?" Moving to the bottom and rummaging around her older sister's bed, Iris returned with a triumphant grin and a small koala plushie.

"If that works for you, go ahead," sighed Jordan, turning back into his room. "I'll find something, don't worry about me, okay?"

"Oooooh." Iris sucked in a breath, smiling slyly. "This is about the little guitar that the girl gave you a month ago, right?"

"I'm going to be playing with it again, if that's what you mean," he replied. His father's guitar had always fascinated him—especially since he wasn't allowed to touch it—and now that he had his own, he'd been using it as much as he possibly could. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"You're blushing," snickered Iris. Jordan raised an eyebrow and turned to the nearest mirror—there wasn't a single tinge of red on his face.

"Darn, I was hoping you'd fall for it and slip up," sighed Iris angrily.

"I think you're spending too much time with the two matchmaking girls," replied Jordan with a smirk. "Anyway, I'll come up with show and tell later."

* * *

"So this is a dandelion I picked up from the side of the road this morning."

"You told me the other day that you were going to come up with your show and tell later," Iris hissed.

"Technically I did come up with it later," Jordan muttered back, gazing forward into the circle of faces and trying to speak out of the corner of his mouth.

"I meant later as in a time that's not the day we had to present it, and especially not the side of the road," replied Iris. It then dawned on Jordan that, despite his best efforts, they weren't really being quiet and everyone was staring at them, Tate included. Frantically turning around, he motioned for his sister to shush, but it didn't work.

"—You were too distracted by the guitar that day, weren't you?"

Jordan sighed angrily, glancing out over the crowd—and sure enough, Sunny and Joan were giggling together. It hadn't even been a month into the class and already Jordan had figured out that they were the matchmakers of the entire daycare—then again, apparently that wasn't saying much. When Iris had brought it up to Snow, she'd simply laughed and made some sort of metaphor (or was it simile? Jordan was very proud he knew the word, anyhow) about match dot com and the daycare.

Everyone else, fortunately, seemed rather oblivious to the issue brought up.

Turning back to the front, Jordan's gaze fell back on the dandelion. "It's yellow and it has—_had_—water drops on it. I can't count all the petals though." Frowning at it, Jordan turned it in his hand; the sun cast golden shadows across the buttercup-yellow surface. "Well, I could if I had more time. Maybe."

"…Alright, Jordan. It _is_ a very pretty flower." Leaning forward again, Miss Maya ruffled up his hair; Jordan did his best not to flinch. He liked Miss Maya well enough, but he didn't like physical contact as a general rule. At any rate, he must have disguised it well enough, because the teacher abruptly stood and clapped her hands twice. "Alright! Sharing time over!" She leaned over to the cooler on her desk. "Snack time in an hour—for now, it's play time! After that, we'll be singing the continent song, so those of you who don't have it memorized had better go learn it quick." She raised an eyebrow. "Come on—I gave you a whole two weeks!"

* * *

Jordan was feeling a rather odd sense of déjà vu as he plunked down in front of the toy pile. Drift was talking to Lizzi while Apple buried his head into her hair in a rather embarrassed fashion; Iris, Joan, and Sunny were muttering incessantly; Tate was wandering around plunking on her ukulele. The only real difference was that Jordan now had a guitar clenched in one hand and a wilting dandelion in the other.

Carefully putting the dandelion on one crossed knee, Jordan gripped onto the guitar and experimentally pulled some strings, holding down others on the other side. So far, he'd found something Snow had identified as a G chord and a C chord, alongside a bunch of other gibberish.

As Jordan gave a single strum to his guitar, a disjointed note rang out; however, the noise was decidedly more tinny. Turning slowly, he saw Tate, who had frozen halfway through making her way toward Jordan. She was looking with wide, watering eyes toward the ukulele in her hands. One thin, curling strand spiraled its way into the air from the stem of the instrument.

"I broke it."

She sniffled once, slowly sinking down next to the boy and laying the broken toy across her lap. The two didn't speak, staring down at the instrument.

Then, Tate's eyes overflowed.

Her remorse was quiet, water simply trickling down her face, dropping pathetically onto the fake wood and into the folds of her skirt. Jordan, not very experienced with girls crying and having to deal with them, simply stared quietly.

Miss Maya noticed with a jolt of alarm, striding over in seconds and patting the girl on the back. "Oh, c'mon, Tate, dear—it's okay. I've got another toy ukulele at home that I'll bring in tomorrow, and for now we can string a craft wire in and see if that works temporarily—how does that sound?"

"…Good," she replied quietly, tears still dropping. The teacher rushed off, rummaging in the large cabinet for the wire, while Jordan continued staring as Tate's expression lengthened to an almost tragic degree.

"Here."

Tate glanced up in surprise, tear tracks still tracing down her face, as Jordan turned away. He couldn't physically feel his cheeks heat up, but he knew that he was blushing, his face scrunching slightly as he tried to work it off.

Thrust out in a fist toward the girl was the dandelion.

Slowly, she took the flower into her own hand from a higher part of the giant stem, the flower drooping slightly. Tate grabbed it by the end closest to the bud, slowly bringing the fist back to herself and clenching it near her stomach. "…Thank you. But why are you giving me the flower?"

Jordan slowly took back his own fist, as if suddenly aware it was still out. He turned away from the girl slightly, this time feeling his face flame up slightly as he muttered under his breath.

"…I don't like seeing you cry."

Tate stared at him with wide eyes, flower to chest with one hand and cradling instrument in lap with the other. There was a silence as Jordan decided that the ceiling was really rather pretty, although he didn't get the cracking pattern along the top.

"Um…That's all. I just thought it would…help…a bit…"

"Hey, Tate!" The two were fortunately saved by the arrival of Miss Maya, who brought over a large length of craft wire and a pair of safety scissors. "Here, let's try and fit this." She wound it over the knob and one end and went to wind it at the other end as well, only to see that instead of being connected to a knob the strings at the top simply disappeared into the plastic of the toy, forming a loop inside. "Oh…well, for now, I guess we'll have to find something to tie the string down with."

"Miss Maya?"

"Coming!" She called toward the shipping trio, who were whispering among each other, before turning back to Tate and Jordan. "Hm, what about the rest of this wire—"

"MISS MAYA!" The caretaker was jolted once again by the powerful lungs of Jordan's own twin sister, who was standing over a suddenly prostrate Sunny. Joan was standing by, and seemed to be holding in some sort of laughter. "Sunny's fallen and she can't get up!"

Looking rather harassed, Maya strode over without another word, inspecting the ship-obsessed girl (who seemed to recover rather quickly). Turning back to Tate, Jordan immediately looked away again—the girl was still staring at him with the post-weeping wide eyes, and for some reason Jordan found his face heating up again. Quickly, he trained his eyes onto the guitar in his lap.

"There."

Looking up slowly and wishing that he had a curtain of hair to hide around like his sisters and Tate and lots of girls seemed to have (although it _would_ be weird if he was the only boy), Jordan lifted his eyes to see Tate tying the dandelion in a knot around the stem of the ukulele, successfully holding down the craft wire. Without looking up from the fixed toy, she smiled.

"It works, right?"

"…Yeah," Jordan replied, looking up at the ceiling and praying break would end so he could retreat to the safety of his siblings and the continent song. He was brought back to the ground, however, when warmth suddenly enveloped his shoulders and midsection.

Tate had suddenly scooted closer and wrapped her arms around him, winding him into a loose hug.

Jordan, not quite sure how to respond, lifted his arms slowly and patted her shoulder awkwardly; however, before he could quite reach it, he felt something soft and comfortably warm touch his cheek for less than a second before Tate was out of his arms in a flash, face the same shade as a not-quite-ripe strawberry.

"Th—that was just saying thank you!" She squeaked slightly, gripping onto the ukulele as if her life depended on it. It took Jordan a second to comprehend what had just happened, and then he turned red as well.

Tate had just kissed his cheek.

"Uh…you're welcome!" He responded fiercely, staring into his lap, cheeks now veritably burning. "It was nothing!"

He tried to sound confident to compensate for the clear lack of dignity and control upon his face, but as Miss Maya called them into a circle for continent song, Jordan could guarantee he saw a quarter slip from Sunny's hand into Iris's.

* * *

**Twelve Years Later**

"Remind me why we're watching this movie again?"

"Because we're a couple," Tate replied, sticking out her tongue as Jordan flopped onto the couch inside the boy's family home. "So it's our duty to do couple-y shit and stuff. And that includes watching movies on a couch on a Friday night. With popcorn."

"Yes, but why are we watching the previews? The movie's so old, all of these have already come out." Jordan rolled his eyes, turning down to face his girlfriend.

"Previews may or may not be the best part of a movie, anyway. Besides, I have a bowl of popcorn in my lap, so I don't particularly want to set it down and get the remote."

"Suit yourself," he sighed, grabbing randomly at a book on the table beside the couch. Flipping through it idly, he froze as the book fell open to a specific page on his lap. Tate noticed the reaction and turned skeptically.

"What is it?"

"What is this doing here?" Using thumb and forefinger, Jordan picked something from the pages of the book.

It was a crushed, half-dried out dandelion.

"Well." Tate blushed a fierce shade of scarlet that Jordan had last seen a year and a half ago, when they'd first started their relationship. "I don't know if you remember, but it's from when we were three—"

"No, I remember that." He waved her on. "What I want to know is why you still have it, when last I checked it was on a broken toy ukulele."

"Look, I was just a stupid three year old, so when I got it the first thought that popped into my head was obviously the result of some random three-year-old tangent slash train of thought slash whatever—" Catching the raised eyebrow on her partner's face, the girl shut up abruptly and gave him a glare before continuing. "Just—my first thought when you gave me that dandelion was—um—"

"Yes?" A grin was starting to form on the boy's face.

"I just thought, 'he's going to be my boyfriend when I grow up!'" Waving her hands in an agitated manner, the girl slumped in a defeated manner onto Jordan's shoulder. "Happy now?"

"Sure." Turning back to the previews, the boy placed the dandelion onto the book.

"Jordan?"

"Mmhm?"

"You totally owe me for that. My face is still red, isn't it?"

"Yeah." Looking downward toward the person supported on his shoulder, Jordan's eyes widened as his girlfriend abruptly connected his lips with hers.

A lot of things in their relationship seemed to happen in that way.

* * *

**You could all tell I died a bit near the end. I was in a hurry to start up on Day 2, which I was excited for-a preview of which is enclosed...right now!**

_"Well, it's not just that," muttered Drift. "I just—can't marry someone like that. I have to marry someone who I know and who knows me and who…who loves me for who I am."_

_"He can learn to."_

_"He might not."_

_"Well, if those are your qualifications, you're going to have a lot of trouble finding someone like that." Laughing, Lizzi straightened out her apron, far shabbier in comparison to Drift's fancy furs. "Shut up in the castle for so long…the only people you know that well are the King, the Queen, and myself."_

_"Well, there's plenty years of life to come," laughed Drift. "That's the good thing; everyone always has some more years at life."_

**Be on the lookout tomorrow! I'm halfway through Day 4, so this time I can guarantee I'll deliver in a timely fashion!**

_**Drabble Wordcount: 3,175 Words**_


	2. Chapter 2

**Hehe, I'm a bit more subdued today. Issues...y'know. The usual.**

**So. Please, guys, review. I don't know how many of you saw this, but...y'know. Y'know? Yeah. Y'know.**

_**DAY 2**_

_**OTP: Lift**_

_**BROTP: Shipping Trio (Joan, Sunny, Iris)**_

_**AU: Fairytale AU**_

* * *

"There's nothing like getting drunk underage in a tavern before we go rob the crown princess," sighed Lily tiredly, raising an eyebrow at her companions. Grabbing her own watered-down rum, she groped at Rie's mug. Although she tried to hide the extent of her drunkenness, her movements were slightly sluggish despite the fact she still had most of her right state of mind. "Oi, Rie, utopia wine doesn't come cheap!"

"Who caaares…'m on the high road of liiiiife…" Slurring considerably more than her counterpart, said person slammed the copper-rimmed mug onto the countertop. "'Sides, we're gonna be robbing the crown. 'f we die tomorrow, might as well spend all our money todaaaay…"

"OR IF WE GET TONS OF MONEY TOMORROW." Soleil, the third person in their trio, stood straight up as her hands moved endlessly over the top of the bar. "IF WE GET TONS OF MONEY TOMORROW. EVERYTHING WILL BE GOOD IF WE GET MONEY TOMORROW!"

"S—sorry about that," sighed Lily, rather tempted to keep slapping money onto the desk. "I know you don't particularly enjoy it when the three of us get roaring drunk."

"Well, at least _you're_ not drunk today," muttered the bartender of the illegal tavern with a sigh. "I think I might survive…this time."

"Poor, silly bartender." There was a surprisingly coherent sentence came from Rie, who grinned at the man rather deviously from her place resting on the countertop. "With us, you're _never_ safe."

"DON'T YOU KNOW WHO WE ARE?!" Grinning, Soleil's hands ran even faster, random fingers pressing as if playing an intricate piano. "WE'RE THE SHI—"

"And that's enough out of you." Slapping a hand over her friend's mouth, Lily began trying to tug Soleil out of the dank basement, ignoring the bartender's raised eyebrow.

"We're…the shit. Get it? WE'RE THE SHIT." Laughing hysterically, Rie stood slightly, joining Soleil in refusal to move.

"You're the shi—the shi-what?" The bartender smiled.

"THERE'S THREE OF US, DUMBASS," yelled Soleil as Lily switched to placing her hands over Rie's mouth instead. "WHO DO YOU THINK WE ARE?!"

"I don't know, the bleedin' Gods?" The bartender's deadpan gaze turned to wiping the glasses, but the certainty in his expression faded with each passing swipe of the rag. Finally, his eyes widened behind thin spectacles in fear as he laid down the things in his hand.

"Don't tell me you're…the Shipping Trio?" The bartender's eyes widened. "The group of three that keeps sending a calling card with a ship ahead of their robberies? The ones who usually go for ships in the harbor?"

"ACTUALLY WE USED TO BE MORE PIRATE ORIENTED. WE WENT FOR SHIPS THAT WERE OUTSIDE THE HARBOR. WE ARE ALWAYS ONE STEP AHEAD. GET IT? CALLING CARDS. PIRATES NOT HARBOR. ONE STEP AHEAD. HAHAHA—" Soleil grinned as Lily slapped a hand over her mouth, the partially-sober girl glaring angrily.

"Actuallyy, we had that name since graaade schooooooool." Yodeling in a sing-song voice, Rie clawed her way back to the bar and downed another mug of utopia wine. "For a different reason, though."

"Remember that time we got my brother and Elda together?" Lily grinned reminiscently for a second, a crooked, alcohol-crazed smile on her face before she snapped back with a shake of her head. "Okay, time to go." Grabbing a wrist in each of her hands, the girl turned and began dragging her friends out of the dank basement-turned-pub, pausing only to glare at the bartender and slap a golden coin onto the bartop. "Seeing as this is an illegal 'prohibition-era-speakeasy,' I hardly need to tell you this, but—"

"—my lips are sealed. Like always." Sighing, the bartender coughed. He was getting that headache again—the one that told him it was just about time to retire.

* * *

There were times when the Crown Princess of Komalia really, _really_ wanted to fuck her own laws and drink.

Drift trailed her fingers along the stone-cold edge of her throne, wishing for a taste of the elusive utopia wine her friend had once gotten for her. Her own dad had outlawed the alcohol that was driving her town and their kingdom to insanity—or was it simply oblivion?

Either one of them was preferable to what was in front of her.

"I won't do it."

"_There are worse things, m'lady,_" whispered her best friend in her ear. Drift tilted her head slightly, eyes still trained on the ambassador in front of her, before standing calmly.

"Lizzi, leave us," she replied. Her friend slash lady-in-waiting gave her a sour but understanding look before bowing and exiting the room. Turning back to the bowing ambassador in front of her, Drift gazed upon him in contempt.

"Again I'll say—I refuse to marry the Alexandrian Crown Prince."

"But, m'lady," sighed the ambassador—Jordan, a devoted citizen of Komalia and best friend of the Crown Prince of Alexandria. "Take it from me personally—Kime's not a bad guy."

"The question isn't whether or not he's a bad person; it's whether or not I will marry him, and I will _not_ marry him!"

With a contemptuous sweep of the mantle draped across her shoulders, Drift nodded respectfully to the man before gliding off through the same door that her lady-in-waiting, Lizzi, had gone through minutes before.

"C'mon, your Highness," sighed the curly-haired girl, waiting outside for the royal heir to arrive. "There are worse things than merging the Alexandrian and Komalian kingdoms."

"As long as we're alone, Lizzi, you can call me Drift," sighed the dark-skinned Princess. "We've been friends since we were children." Sighing and sitting onto the couch outside, Drift whisked off her crown and tossed it to the side; Lizzi caught it with a grin. "I just—we've been at war with those stupid Alexandrians since my parent's generation. Even _ignoring_ the fact that I've never met this guy, if I had to marry someone, I'd rather it not be an _Alexandrian._"

"Hey, what's wrong with Alexandrians?" Lizzi's voice was offended, and Drift tossed her a deadpan glare.

"Listen, you've lived in Komalia since you came here—"

"—Since your warlord ancestors dragged me here—"

"—So I hardly think you count as an Alexandrian anymore."

"Well, Komalia may have my bones if it wishes, but Alexandria will have my soul," the fairer-skinned foreigner sing-songed cryptically, clasping her hands with a sigh. "Either way, don't fault the guy just because he's Alexandrian."

"Well, it's not just that," muttered Drift. "I just—can't marry someone like that. I have to marry someone who I know and who knows me and who…who loves me for who I am."

"He can learn to."

"He might not."

"Well, if those are your qualifications, you're going to have a lot of trouble finding someone like that." Laughing, Lizzi straightened out her apron, far shabbier in comparison to Drift's fancy furs. "Shut up in the castle for so long…the only people you know that well are the King, the Queen, and myself."

"Well, there's plenty years of life to come," laughed Drift. "That's the good thing; everyone always has some more years at life."

* * *

"We'regonnadiewe'regonnadieWE'REGONNAMOTHERFUCKING DIE—"

"We're the ones that're on hangovers!" Hissing angrily at her counterpart, Rie grabbed threateningly at the handkerchief around her head. "I swear to God if you get us caught and _really_ make us die, I'm going to haunt your soul forever."

"Pre-theft jitters always seem to hit you," Soleil said quietly, trying to help her vocal chords recover from screaming and her brain recover from the hangover. Nevertheless, she held out a water skin toward the quickly panicking Lily. "Want a sip of utopia wine?"

"…Where the hell did you get that?"

"I just carried an empty skin into the bar and emptied a cup into it when the bartender wasn't looking…and when you weren't looking, for that matter."

"I'll take it," she replied with a sigh, taking a large swig before grinning.

"Better?"

"Better." With a grin, Lily motioned to Rie. "Put the cloth back on and throw the rope over the fence! We've got some robbing to do!"

* * *

Lizzi was accustomed to prowling the house at night, equipped with a lantern, exploring nooks and crannies. Many long-forgotten years ago, she had done so looking for a way out of her prison and back to her home; however, nowadays, she did it purely from experience (not to mention the fact that the castle had neverending secrets).

Today, there was something that wasn't usually found in her experience.

A thing that just so happened to be the Crown Princess shoving her own royal jewels into a rucksack in the middle of the castle's treasure trove.

"Your highness!"

"Lizzi!" Giving a start, Drift toppled backwards onto a pile of gold coins. Slowly raising the upper half of her body with her arms, the crown toppled off her head and she grabbed it back with a quick fist. "Godammit, don't startle me—and haven't I told you to call me Drift?"

"Drift, with all due respect, _what the bloody fuck are you doing?!_"

"I can't marry the Alexandrian prince, Lizzi. I just can't. And—nope, nope, nope!" Drift held up her hand to stop Lizzi's protest as she opened her mouth. "Not just because he's Alexandrian! It's because I don't love him!"

"Well then, who _are_ you planning to marry?!" Lizzi sighed, placing her hands on her hips. "You know it's gonna have to be in the next year, or you'll lose the crown!"

"I'll meet them soon!"

"…You just said earlier today that they needed to know you well."

"I'll cross that bridge when I get there!" Drift stained scarlet. "For now, I gotta get out of this place before people use me as a political pawn to merge Komalia with Alexandria!"

"Drift, if it doesn't happen, the two countries have the possibility of annihilating each other." Lizzi had done quite a bit more research about the two countries than Drift, seeing as she lived in one and considered herself from another. "Soon. Real soon. As in two years." She paused. "Also, the people in Komalia aren't doing too well. The war is sucking out taxes faster than you can stuff your own jewels into your rucksack. " Gesturing wildly toward the sack, Lizzi glared accusingly. "For Pete's sake, one of your angry citizens could be trying to rob your own crown jewels as we speak—and as you yourself are trying to rob them too!"

* * *

"Psh, these guards are child's play!" Scoffing, Rie launched a tranquilizer-laced metal pick into a chink in heavy-metal armor. He dropped like a fly with a large metallic clank, alerting his comrade; however, before the other guard could continue, he too collapsed.

"Careful. Pride before a fall." Nevertheless, Soleil shot a grin to her friend as she darted like a black flash down the hall. The others followed suit, footsteps muffled by thick carpet.

"Lily, did you nick the map from your brother?"

"Yeah," the girl sighed, procuring the papers. "I feel really, _really_ bad stealing from Jordan though…"

"Think of it as the payment for getting him together with the love of his life."

"Yeah. Besides, even if he's the ambassador of Komalia and Alexandria, he's technically a Komalian citizen; how bad can it be taking a paper from your own country?"

"Pretty damn bad, if you're trying to _steal_ from it." Chuckling, Rie grabbed onto a small door to the side that almost blended into the wall, glanced at the crumpled paper in her hand, and dove in.

The two other thieves followed suit, falling about five feet before landing painfully into a pile of coins.

"Who the hell puts a door five foot above the floor?!" Rie lifted a hand, shaking it and letting coins fall out of her sleeves, when all three of the Shipping Trio froze.

Sitting in front of them was a face anyone would recognize anywhere—Drift, the Crown Princess of Komalia.

* * *

Lizzi didn't have to ask to know that the three people who dropped in through the main doorway into the treasure hoard were thieves.

Drift, on the other hand, gazed skeptically at the three people, dressed in black with covered faces. There was no such thing as simple clothes in the Komalian era—even poor families could go out into fields and pull Frasasfass weeds from any field and weave silvery strands into any piece of clothing. The three people had metallic silver in a patterned border around their clothing—they were girls, upon further reflection. The black underneath their clothing was slightly patched, but overall neat enough.

It was rather clear that they were from poor origins.

"FUCK." One of the girls leaped up, wincing as her tailbone left the 'cushion' of gold and let the full impact of the fall hit her. "What do we do now, guys?"

"Hahahahaha—what kind of a question is that?" The other was slowly pulling something out of her sleeve. "We knock 'em dead—or unconscious—of course!"

There was no time to react—the last of the three pulled another dart out of the sleeve, and Lizzi heard Drift fall at the exact same time that she did.

* * *

They woke up in the throne room, surrounded by piles of their own money. Lizzi was bound but not gagged and sitting angrily on the ground, and Drift was seated on her throne with a knife to her throat and her wrists bound to the arms of the throne.

"Heh, sorry," said the person holding the knife. "It's a necessary precaution, you understand? "

"Do you know who I am?!" Drift growled. "I'm the—"

"The crown princess, we know, we're not stupid," remarked another thief, busy throwing the bags out the window. Judging by the responding clinks outside, the third thief was catching them and putting them into some escape vehicle. "Why do you think we've got you here?"

"Well, if that's the case you should know that the guards are—"

"We've knocked them out," came the response, rather bored. "That, and everyone else is asleep. It's just an extra safety step."

"It does lead me to wonder, though," mused the thief behind the throne, shifting the knife; Drift winced. "What were you two doing together in the treasure room?"

"Running away, believe it or not," sighed Lizzi. At Drift's glare, she shrugged. "What? They're more likely to let us go if they know that's the case."

"We're going to let you go anyway after we've cleared out all the loot. At any rate, though, that's quite clever, Miss…and you are?"

"Lizzi." Her words were short and clipped. "Lady-in-waiting. Alexandrian. Lived in Komalia since three."

"…Ah." There was a snicker in the thief's voice as she threw out another bag and turned to face the maid fully. "And you two were planning on running away together…are you guys…"

"Wha—no!" Drift gave a loud, choking laugh. "Are you kidding? I'm Komalian and she's Alexandrian—"

"Again, what's wrong with being Alexandrian?!" Lizzi gave an exasperated huff. Switching the knife from one hand to another, the thief behind her leaned over and patted the maid on the head.

"It's okay. Denial can be quite a bitch; as long as you know she loves you—"

"Godammit, we are _not_ lovers!"

"Of course you aren't, dear," the thief laughed. Peeved, Drift gave a swipe toward the thief's mask—she dodged.

"No need to get angry, your highness. A couple more bags and you're free to march off into the sunset with your lover."

"Shut up."

"Are you the seme or the uke?"

"_Shut up._"

"Tsundere, eh? A bit like Romeo and Juliet—two lovers from enemy kingdoms—no wait, you're betrothed to the Alexandrian prince, too!"

"SHUT UP!"

"Don't get high blood pressure," a voice responded sweetly; it was the final thief, who'd come upstairs to grab the last couple of bags. "It's time to go. I'm sure they'll find you in the morning and untie you—at which point we'll be safe behind our alibis."

"I _will_ find you, make no mistake," growled Drift.

"People have been trying to find us for many years, and they haven't succeeded," the person behind her laughed into her ear. Drift shifted slightly.

"Can you at least tell me who you are?!"

"You mean they never bothered showing you the calling card? We sent it a week ago, like we always do. Then again, sometimes the servants think it's better to try and catch us on their own…" The person behind Drift finally withdrew the knife, walking in a wide circle to avoid the legs she kicked toward her and pointing a dart rather threateningly when she opened her mouth to scream. "We're the Shipping Trio!"

"The—" Drift almost groaned, exchanging an exasperated glance with Lizzi. "For the love of God, did you take the _entire_ royal reserve?"

"We may be poor, but again I say, we're not stupid. We don't want the entire kingdom to descend into anarchy any more than you do. I'd say we've left enough to keep the kingdom running as regular…not to say we didn't get a nice haul for ourselves." The black figure turned to her comrades. "Is there anything we've forgotten?"

"We've gotta gag them so they don't alert the others as soon as we're out of the room."

"Or we could just knock them out."

"Where's the fun in that?"

Drift barely had time to speak up in protest before a heavy rag was shoved into her mouth. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the same thing being done to her friend; and then two of the three saluted the prisoners mockingly and were out the door. The third also raised a hand to her head in salute, but paused halfway.

"…Listen." She sighed, straightening. "I've got some…family in the government, so I know your situation, and while I can't pretend to be an authority on it, I will say this. If you're going to marry someone and you _refuse_ to have it be the Alexandrian king, well…"

She paused, glancing between the two, and sighed.

"Marry someone who matters."

And then the door closed and the night was left to Drift, Lizzi, their silence, and the rattling hooves and raucous laughter of another job well done.

* * *

"M'lady, are you okay?" The simple parlor maid held out the tray of warm milk toward the Princess, who was lolling her head quietly against the throne.

"I'm fine, Andie," she sighed quietly. "Leave us."

Andie nodded, glancing quickly over at Lizzi, who bowed and waved her fellow servant and friend out of the room.

"…Lizzi?"

"Yes, Drift?"

"…Remember what the girl said last night."

"Look, I wouldn't let it get to you," sighed Lizzi exasperatedly. "They're just a group of three girls who make their living by stealing other people's hard work—"

"I have to marry someone by next year."

"Yes."

"I need to make an Komalia-Alexandrian merger."

"…Yes." Lizzi sighed, placing a comforting hand onto Drift's shoulder. Drift remained still, staring out to the window across her throne. Just yesterday, she'd seen her jewels leave her presence by that very window.

"…You're Alexandrian."

Lizzi paused, hand frozen onto her friend's shoulder. She withdrew it slowly, gulping.

"…Look, Drift, I'm not even royalty, even if I _am_ Alexandrian. Also, didn't you say you need to marry someone who you…" Lizzi swallowed heavily. "…love?"

"…Truthfully, I don't love anyone right now," the crown Princess replied quietly. "But I've known you longest. And I think I could learn to l-love you, if I had the chance." Her gaze turned to her childhood friend, her servant, her confident. "Are you willing to take the chance, too?"

* * *

"'Nd that." Gulping heavily, Lily slammed the tankard as hard as she could onto the bar…and then some more, until the handle clanked off and she gave a crow of satisfaction. "'nd THAT'S how I fucking saved the motherfucking KOMALIAN PRINCESS from a fucking life of fucking loneliness and—and helped fucking merge the fucking kingdoms together!"

"You mean 'we,'" sighed Soleil. It was her turn to remain sober. "_We_ got Princess Drift and Lizzi—well, now it's Princess Lizzi—together. And how we merged the Komalian and Alexandrian kingdoms to create the Komandrian kingdom. "

"To be f-faaaaaaaaaaaaaaair…" Rie slurred happily. "We didn't knoooooooow…we didn't know th't Lizzi was the cousin of the…'f theeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee…" She trailed off, expression morphing into a rather confused look.

"The Alexandrian Prince?"

"THAT'S FUCKING RIGHT." As the bartender gave Lily another mug with a raised eyebrow, she grabbed at it and downed it as mead dripped down the sides of her face. "The fucking betrothed's fucking _cousin_, of all fucking things." She put the tankard back on the counter, clinking it against the bar until it chipped. "This fucking tastes like piss," she spat. "I wouldn't destroy all these fucking cups if it didn't taste like fucking piss."

Soleil folded her arms and raised an eyebrow, leaning her back against the counter. "You're the one that refuses to drink utopia wine."

"Someone's gotta save the fucking money." She replied.

"Sooooo…that made Lizzi…uuuuum…almost royaltyyyyy…"

"Close enough of one to merge the kingdoms when they got married."

"What a fucking…fucking…" Lily paused, looking for a good word. "What a fucking coincidence." She slammed the cup on the table, laughing loud enough for the entire bar to turn when it broke into shards on the table.

"You're paying for that, y'know," sighed the bartender, having known the identity of the trio for two years and having dealt with them for even longer. Lily shrugged.

"That's just fucking…that's just fan-fucking-tastic," she grinned.

"Yep, I'd say that pretty much sums up the world at this point," grinned Soleil, slapping a particularly large royal emerald onto the table and smiling as Rie slurred, Lily swore, and the bartender kept up the neverending stream of liquid quicksilver far into the night.

* * *

**For everyone who was wondering, the bartender is Yew.**

**Yeah. I don't like this one as much. I haven't talked to Drift in a while...or Lizzi, for that matter, which is probably why I found characterization harder.**

**I used alternate names for a lot of us. Lily is Iris, Soleil is Sunny, Rie is Joan, Jordan is Jordan, Elda is Tate, Lizzi is Lizzi, Kime is Apple, and Drift is Drift.**

_**Drabble Wordcount: 3, 872 Words**_


	3. Chapter 3

**THANKS FOR THE REVOIWS! Yep. Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way reference. (Or Enoby...Enony TAroby, or whatever it was. Y'know. The works.) Anyway.**

**_DAY 3:_**

**_OTP: Bunny_**

**_BROTP: Riordan_**

**_AU: Harry Potter AU_**

* * *

The four people crowded around the singular table closest to the snow-frosted window in the Three Broomsticks cheered simultaneously.

"BACK TO SPELLS AND ENCHANTMENTS, POTIONS AND FRIENDS!"

"TO GRYFFINDOR!"

"HUFFLEPUFF!"

"RAVENCLAW!"

"SLYTHERIN!"

The four put up their mugs one at a time, depending on their house, and clinked them together when the final person (the green-and-silver scarfed Slytherin) placed it into the air. The four dissolved in raucous laughter when the girl with the yellow insignia on her cloak stood up, still laughing, and tossed her empty cup onto the table.

"Alright," she grinned, waving at her friends and pushing her glasses higher onto her nose. "It's time for me to get back. I told Drift I'd meet her in the Hufflepuff common room to study for herbology."

"Aw, are you sure, Tish?" Another girl, who looked rather similar to the Hufflepuff but sported Ravenclaw colors, frowned. "We've only got an hour left in Hogesmeade."

"We haven't even been to Honeydukes yet!" The Gryffindor girl grinned. "I didn't even challenge you to an Acid Pop competition!"

"That's _definitely_ my cue to go," Tish replied, turning. Joan, the Slytherin, stood up quickly and held out a hand.

"Oi, you haven't paid yet!"

"You owe me for trapping me in the Room of Requirement with Isaac for an entire school day," replied Tish, calling over her shoulder with a smirk and narrowed eyebrows.

"It was for her own good," sighed Joan.

"We know," replied the Ravenclaw and Gryffindor in unison, the three drawing closer.

"Alright, how are we gonna get Tate and Jordan together?" Sunny's eyes glinted as she pulled the gold and red scarf higher up her face.

Iris frowned. "I thought Tish and Isaac were our current project?"

"For a Ravenclaw, you're misinformed," joked Joan. "We put them on hold now that they're so suspicious of us after the…um…the Noodle Incident."

The three exchanged glances; Sunny shivered, Iris's eyes widened, and Joan instinctively rubbed the base of her right wrist. The three silently promised to never talk about it again. For the fifth time.

"Anyway. We've gotta get them together! Any plans?"

Sunny's eyes danced with merriment. "Room of Requirement?"

"We've used that recently." Joan smirked. "We can't let people get used to us, after all, right?"

"Nope," Iris agreed with a grin. "We already know they like each other; they just refuse to admit it in front of _each other._"

"…Just to be sure, is it the 'we know they like each other' like our 'we think so like usual' or the 'we actually have legitimate proof that they like each other?'"

"We _always_ have legitimate proof." Joan paused. "…This time, it's more legitimate than usual, because they said it this time. Separately. To us."

"Oh, great!" Sunny flashed a blinding grin. "So, what should we do?"

"They're just both afraid of rejection," explained Iris. "If we somehow convince one of them that the other legitimately likes them, then they'll confess and we'll be fine."

"But they'll never confess in front of each other," frowned Joan.

"…But what if one of them didn't know the other was there?"

* * *

Tate was quietly moving around the potions classroom. Slughorn had taken a fancy to her, going so far as to invite her to the Slug Club and introduce her to one of the survivors of the Great War—Hermione Granger, who'd given her some tips from Harry Potter's potion book. She was just beginning to recreate a cauldronful of Amortentia, complete with her new silver knife.

And then the quiet was broken quite suddenly by the arrival of Sunny Summers.

"TAAAATE!"

The door flew open, and Tate gave a start, accidentally letting the pieces from the mushrooms of a fairy ring fly over her face, two or three plopping into the pot. Frantically, Tate grabbed the glass stirrer and attempted to give it a counterclockwise turn, but it was too late—yellow smoke belched from the top, and Tate lifted her hands in preparation for explosion.

Sunny got a mouthful of foul, yellow-tinted smoke.

"The hell, man?" Sunny coughed, waving a hand in front of her face. "C'mon, let's go to the common room!"

"Not now, Sunny. I'm trying a new technique—"

"Too late!" Sunny gripped her hand and raced her out of the dungeon. "C'mon! As fellow Gryffindors, we gotta help each other, and I need a _lot _of help!"

* * *

"_Quidquid Erit,_" Tate sighed to the fat lady, giving up and letting Sunny drag her into the common room. There was a sizeable crowd, ogling at the lone Slytherin with folded arms and one leg over another sitting in a winged armchair by the fire.

"Alright, guys, break it up!" Sunny shooed them off, occasionally waving at a couple of her friends. It was then that Tate figured out that the Slytherin was Joan. There were times when Tate wondered how the girl, nice and upfront as she was, even got into Salazar Slytherin's cunning house when she didn't hide emotions and insanity particularly well.

When she turned, though, there was a glint in her eye.

Tate gulped. _Oh yeah. That's why._

"We need to talk."

* * *

"Just because I gave you the password to the Slytherin common room doesn't mean you're allowed to barge in whenever you want!" Jordan hissed to his twin sister out of the corner of his mouth, glancing at his confused housemates as she threw a handful of floo powder into the fire. It exploded into green flickering flame and a shower of sparks.

"Calm down, Jordan. Besides, even if you didn't give me permission, Joan did, so it's all okay."

Jordan leaned back, raising an eyebrow. "What are you doing, anyway?"

"Spicing up your love life," Iris answered before shoving her head into the fireplace. Jordan's eyes widened and he could feel his cheeks turning red, hearing his friends snickering slightly.

"…_What?!_"

"Jordan, get in here." Without pulling her head out of the fire, Iris groped around before grabbing Jordan roughly by the shirt collar and blindly dragging his head into the fire alongside hers.

They saw the scene through a haze of green smoke, and Jordan was pretty sure Iris was taking the opportunity to pinch some sort of major artery in his neck, but he still saw the scene rather clearly, and heard it as if it were spoken in his ear—Tate, being confronted by Joan and Sunny in the cozy Gryffindor common room.

"_So, what do you need help with?"_ The disgruntled potions student raised an eyebrow, left as the only one standing when Sunny strode over and took a seat on the chair beside Joan's.

"_Confirmation, actually,"_ smirked Joan. She cast an approving smile to Sunny. _"Sorry we had to trick you here. We just wanted to hear, again, what you thought of Jordan."_

"_This again?" _She groaned. _"Haven't I already told you?"_

"The hell is this?" Hissing angrily so that the people in the other room couldn't hear, Jordan turned to Iris, her face obstructed by a shock of green flames. He attempted to pull out, but Iris growled and gave a fierce pinch to the back of his neck. "Ow! Motherfu—"

"_We just…need to know some more." _Joan's eyes peered closer. "_Are you really in love?_"

"What the—" Iris gave another pinch, and Jordan glared angrily, shutting up. They really needed a better method of communication.

"_Please, like I would tell you,_" Tate scowled. "_The only thing you're going to do with the information is try and run away and meddle with it again, like you guys always do._"

"_We've had some successes—like Mike and Drift, and—_"

"_Yes, but that doesn't guarantee a success for me!_" Tate glared. "_I'd rather deal with my own emotions on my own time, thanks._"

"_What time is that?_" Sunny spoke quietly. "_A month? Two months? A year? If you need help, we can provide it for you…just trust us._"

"…_It doesn't matter. I know what the end result will be._" Tate scowled, pushing down some sort of bad memory or feeling. "_Besides, even if I needed help, what would __**you**__ two know about love, anyway?_"

* * *

There were times when people forgot why Joan was in Slytherin.

Not that people ever forgot that she _was_ a Slytherin—she was the first muggle-born to get in that house of Snakes ever since the infamous incident eighty years ago—however, people often forgot _why._ She wasn't pure-blood, that much was certain. She wasn't 'evil,' which was still what people tended to associate with that house first even though the Great War had been over for verging on a decade.

_Cunning. Resourcefulness. Ambition._

Joan had one goal in mind in that one moment, and it was to get Tate to confess her love for the boy whose head was inconspicuously in the fire behind her strategically placed chair.

_Ambition._

There was only one thing in the way of her goal, at the moment. That was Tate's adamant refusal to say anything until Joan proved to her that both her and Sunny understood love to a fundamental degree.

Tate was in heavy denial. She wouldn't accept the excuses that they could legitimately give—that they'd gotten people together in the past. Joan didn't have much to work with. She had her past experience—none of which Tate would accept. She had the things in her pocket—no pictures she could claim as a false boyfriend. She had the common room. She had the people in the fireplace, but she couldn't reveal them yet—not at any cost.

She had a girl, her partner in crime, sitting next to her.

"Actually…me and Sunny are dating."

_Resourcefulness. Cunning._

* * *

"…You're _what?!_"

"_What?!_"

"HELL, WHAT?!"

Tate, eyes and mouth already wide open from the shock, jumped back with a scream as two people tumbled out of the fireplace—a Ravenclaw and another Slytherin.

"What the—Iris!" Joan hissed angrily. "I thought I told you to make sure Jordan wasn't seen _no matter what—_"

"It doesn't matter, I've seen enough," glared Jordan. He turned to Tate, his eyes softening slightly. "They said something about…Love."

Tate said nothing, staring with a bemused expression frozen on her face, face turning red.

"…Is it true?"

Tate didn't move, so Jordan took a couple of steps forward, staining red himself.

"Tate?"

Silence.

"I'd say that's an answer in and of itself," sighed Iris, wiping her forehead with the edge of her cloak. For a second, it seemed as if the answer didn't register; however, Jordan gave a smile the likes of which Joan had never seen before as he slowly gathered the blushing girl into a hug and let her bury her burning face into his shoulder.

Between the quietly embarrassed newfound couple and the proud pair of matchmakers congratulating each other, no one noticed Iris casting a critical eye toward her two compatriots.

* * *

It had been two weeks, and the cold had seeped into the interior of the castle at Hogwarts. Even the roaring fires and furnaces couldn't keep out the chill, so many people deigned to spend their time outdoors in the snow as opposed to the equally cold indoors.

So the Shipping Trio took to the outdoors, wrapped in three different house color mufflers and talking among themselves about their reinstated top project—Tisaac.

"So I was thinking, since Room of Requirement didn't work, we should follow the Tate-Jord example and try and get a confession out of them first. At any rate, it'll solidify our evidence and give us time to come up with some…better ideas." Iris shuddered, thinking of the Noodle Incident no doubt, and looked over at her friends.

"…Yeah…"

Iris gave herself a small, private smile before turning and smirking at her two rather silent friends. It couldn't be just her who was sensing the awkwardness and hesitation between her friends, and her shipping mind buzzed with possibilities; however, she played it cool.

"Hey, I'm going to go talk to Devi about the whole 'anthropomorphic nations' conspiracy." Iris pumped a fist in the air. "The Ministry is hiding their existence, I'm sure of it! Devi said she's found something in the muggle world, so I told her I'd meet up with her in the Ravenclaw common room." She turned toward the doorway, giving a smile and a wave. "See you all later! Brainstorm for Tisaac!"

As soon as she was behind the arched, open-air doorway, she ran into the 'Jortato' couple—Tate and Jordan, hands clasped, both still red even after two weeks in a sweet relationship.

"Oh, hey Iris." Jordan nodded to his sister, noticing her devious expression. "Is something up?"

"I have two people out there who see love in _so many other people_ but can't take a step back to look at the sexual tension between each other." Iris growled. "I need to do _something_…I just don't know how to introduce the idea to them…"

"I can help you with that—or rather, we can," cut in Tate with narrowed eyebrows, causing Jordan to glance over at her with a disgruntled 'what?' "Leave it to me—I want payback."

"…Okay…?" Shrugging, Iris glanced around as Tate dragged Jordan outside, catching sight of her friend from Ravenclaw. "DEVI! C'mon! What were you saying about this He—Heta—Hetalia?"

* * *

"JOAN! SUNNY!"

The two friends, caught in the midst of a semi-awkward silence, turned to find Tate dragging Jordan by the hand toward them. Tate automatically grabbed Sunny by the hand, dragging her away from Jordan and Joan. "Help me out here, Sunny; I need transfiguration advice! So remember the whole beer bottle thing that happened yesterday—"

"Joan."

Joan turned from the spectacle to see Jordan looking at her with a raised eyebrow. The two were relatively good friends, being from the same house and in the same year, and Joan could see just from his expression that Jordan was, while serious, also slightly amused.

"We need to talk."

* * *

"Neither me nor Tate were fooled, obviously."

"By what?"

The two Slytherins were pacing in the opposite direction of the two talking Gryffindors. Joan was methodically pulling Every Flavor Beans from her pocket and munching them, occasionally spitting them out into the snow.

"You and Sunny, 'going out.' With two loud personalities such as yourselves, along with Iris spending all her time with you and not having the most discretion of her own, it was pretty obvious that if you two had gotten together, we would have heard of it."

"Yeah, so? What's the point?" Joan gave a trilling laugh that didn't quite convey actual amusement. "It was just a quick, spur of the moment ruse to get you and Tate together."

"Why do you think it worked?"

"What?"

The two stopped walking. Jordan turned to face his friend, raising an eyebrow. "Why do you think the deception worked?"

"Oh, psh." Waving her hand in the air, Joan grinned. "All three of you were surprised by it."

"Surprised, yes. That doesn't mean we didn't believe it." Jordan smiled this time. "If it was that unbelievable, why do you think we'd be so surprised in the first place? Tate would have just shrugged it off. She's quite sharp, also."

Joan's face by now was stony, and her glare would have scared any other person off. Jordan simply smiled. "So, I'm going to ask you again—why did it work?"

"How should I know how you guys think?" Joan toyed with the edge of her scarf. "What's the point in this, anyway?"

"I'll tell you why we weren't more skeptical. It's because we see how you two talk to each other." Jordan placed a hand onto his friend's shoulder. "Listen, Joan, I'm giving you free advice. Think of it as payment in kind for when you got me and Tate together." Looking at Joan's downturned, troubled face, Jordan smiled. "You gave me something I was too scared to do on my own, and I'm all the happier for it. You've been the matchmaker for so long—maybe it's time to find yourself a match before you keep going."

* * *

"AS LONG AS WE'RE TOGETHER—"

"—GONNA KICK SOME ASS!"

"**AND IT'S GONNA BE TOTALLY AWESOME!**"

It was Christmas Eve, and the little 'clique' that called themselves 'CftBF' had joined the group of people that was flooding through the one-eyed witch's hump. Ever since the Great War, the Marauder's Map had been made public to some degree, and it became something of a Hogwarts tradition for the students remaining at Hogwarts to go to Hogesmeade during certain holidays. The teachers either didn't know or didn't care, so every year the Three Broomsticks was jam-packed with Hogwarts students.

Tonight, it was just Joan, Sunny, and Iris sitting at their favorite window-side table and celebrating the fact that they'd caught Tish and Isaac sharing a butterbeer in a two-person booth. Cue more raucous singing and AVPM references—despite the fact that Iris was a half-blood and Sunny was a pure-blood, all three had taken the time to watch and remember the musical.

"Alright," hiccupped Iris finally, wiping a tear from her eye and flicking it unceremoniously into Sunny's drink; the girl, still laughing, grabbed the salt shaker and tapped a couple of grains into Iris's cup. "I'm gonna go wish Snow a Merry Christmas. You guys should go spend some time together doing something else." She stopped laughing abruptly, grinning. "…On the dance floor."

"Shut up, Iris," sighed Joan as Iris stood up and saluted dramatically.

"Don't spend too long making kissy faces; I'll be back!"

There was a profuse silence that lingered in the air, tapping both individuals on the shoulders and reminding them nonstop of unfinished business. Finally Sunny stood, slapping both hands on the table and clearing her throat.

"Well, should we…"

"If you want to," Joan replied with a shrug, trying not to show any emotion as she rose and grabbed her friend's hand off the table.

A happy Christmas song that was too upbeat to be a slow dance but too slow to dance to with anything but the traditional waltz position permeated through the room, and Joan took Sunny's hand tentatively, both attempting to take the lead nonstop.

"So…Sunny." Joan coughed, nimbly maneuvering her hands and feet so that she was leading. "I don't know if you knew, but when you and Tate were talking, me and Jordan were talking about something…not school related."

"I know," replied Sunny, wrenching her hand out of Joan's and placing it onto her waist, attempting to take the lead. "Tate was making an excuse and talked about something different too. I'm assuming Jordan talked to you about the same thing."

"Mm." Joan stared out the window, towards the fairy lights lighting up the street. Lights twirled in giant circles in the shape of an invisible cone-shaped tree, suspended by levitation spells. The streets and windowsill glistened with snow.

She threw her cunning, ambition, resourcefulness out the window.

"So…about that…would you like to…"

"Yeah." Sunny grinned, successfully regaining control and bringing Joan in close to her body, warm in spite of the winter weather. "Yeah, I'd like to try…this."

Quite nearby, among the chatter, Joan tilted her head slightly to catch sight of Iris stage-whispering '_Wingardium Leviosa,' _levitating something toward them. Glancing up lazily without lifting her head off her partner's shoulder, she smiled rather wryly at her friends cunning. It was, after all, something she herself would have done.

"Mistletoe." Joan untangled a hand from Sunny's and pointed upward. "Iris is way too much like us."

Sunny looked upward as well, grinning and gliding the couple away from the branch; Iris twitched her wand, and the plant followed them. She smiled at Joan.

"Well, we're obviously not getting rid of it anytime soon." Sunny's grin faded slightly, as she coughed awkwardly. "Um…should we…"

"Nah." Joan gave a wolfish grin. "We don't want people to get used of us, do we?"

Sunny nodded affirmation and Joan twirled out her wand from the inside of her sleeve, banished the mistletoe toward an affectionately cuddly Tate and Jordan, and pulled her own partner in for their first kiss.

* * *

**I'm neutral on this one because I hate the writing I did but BUNNY AND HP AU! (throws confetti)**

**I offer up in tribute a small bunny (take that any way you will) in exchange for reviews of any kind.**

_**Drabble Wordcount: 3,493 Words**_


	4. Chapter 4

**None of the rest of these will be done on time, I'm afraid. I'll get them on the week after the 16th of August.**

_**DAY 4:**_

_**OTP: Driftle**_

_**BROTP: Snapple**_

_**AU: Bar AU**_

**(Bar AU**: TG is the bartender who's sober most of the time and ships people. Jordan works for her as a waiter. Without a shirt. AU says he has abs. xD Apple is a single drunk. His wife left him for reasons she refused to talk about and he doesn't have a job. He's also constantly stuck in memory lane. Sunny and Maya and Tate are the ones who are usually at the billiard table. They're around eighteen in the AU. Sunny comes to the bar to get away from her parents, and she is also an ex-assassin. Because reasons. Andie is the one who usually drags Tate home afterwards. Tish is the artist who didn't sell. Completely broke, barely living, and what she has she spends on beer. Drift and Lizzi are travellers who came to seek shelter from a storm one night. Drift looks suspiciously like App's missing wife. Iris used to be a successful prosecuting attorney, but she tampered with evidence and was sued. She lost. She smokes and drinks a lot now. Her old client was App's wife, who was originally intending to sue her husband because she believed he was cheating on her. She was stripped of her badge and can retake the BAR Exam in ten years; hence, she considers the number unlucky due to her case of OCD. Snow is the performer of the bar, but she's a sex addict. Devi is a druggie who got pulled in by "friends." She was very naive back then, believing everything they said. OH AND EVERYONE'S AN ALCOHOLIC.)

* * *

Mike's liked words for as long as he can remember—not enough to do anything truly productive with them, but enough to toy around with them and make them his for a while now. Lately, he's been trying to find one word in particular.

One word, to describe the smoky air that surrounds him and seems to fill him when he stares into the bottom of his eighth cup of bourbon.

The bar can be interpreted as painfully traditional or sleekly modern, depending on how you look at the rotting oak that once was slathered with a thin film of sheen. The entire place is steel and wood, once sleek and now rusting and filled with the smog of one too many cigarettes.

It's this smog, this thick air that hangs like a raincloud that everyone knew was coming and knows is here to stay, that Mike struggles to define through the haze of alcohol slowing the blood in his veins.

_Lonely. Sick. Depressed._

The word escapes him like a puppet that's cut its strings and escaped from the master. It dances on the edge of his thoughts, almost there but not quite. Something that symbolizes this downfall, that captures the decline of the lives of every single person in the bar. All walks of life fit into the rotting doors and once-attractive neon signs that tempt people to enter and forget their worries, forget their lives and names and everything for one more hour, one more cup.

There is only one similarity among the people here, and that is the absence of happiness and their loss of the drive to even attempt to pursue it.

_So much for the American Dream, _Mike thinks as he calls for a ninth bourbon.

It is something everyone at the bar understands. Whether you can't find something, just lost something, or never had it in the first place—if it's not there, the bottle can replace it.

* * *

Mike is two-thirds of the way into his fourth cup of scotch (he feels like scotch today, in the way his muscles burn without any alcohol and the dry taste of a hangover from yesterday doesn't disappear as the hours wear on) when the door opens. Everyone stops—the girl at the billiard table lining up her shot freezes up and the ball goes entirely the wrong way.

It's too early in the night for the billiard-playing girl's friend to come in and drag her away like she does on Tuesday, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and it's too late for any of the other regulars to come in. There hasn't been a new customer since the girl who now smokes illicit materials from a waterpipe entered the bar one clear November morning with a sachet of marijuana a year ago.

Nevertheless, two individuals with large, overbearing raincoats tumble into the bar alongside the lashing tendrils of rain that whip along the bartender's heels.

Everyone remains silent, the quiet chatter that circles around the familiars frozen in throats and on tongues as the drink runner slowly makes his way over and offers to take their coats. As he hangs it onto the coat rack, the two look around the bar. Mike doesn't catch a glimpse of their faces between the shadows and the darkened lighting. Someone else does, though—and within seconds, the ex-prosecuting attorney that reminds Mike of the worst moments of his life is bearing down upon the strangers.

Ms. Iris Jade stood across from him in a courtroom too few years ago and worked her way to a conclusion that lost her her life's work and lost Mike his wife.

"You," she says hoarsely. She stabs out her cigarette on the doorframe, her eyes wide and her mouth firm. She stumbles slightly, but straightens herself out of something that seems to be half conviction and half sheer, unadultered anger. "How could you—why—how _dare_ you show your filthy face to me again!"

Her muscles tense, and the drink runner (her brother, Mike's mind supplies helpfully) barely has time to bolt over and grab her by her forearms before she lunges towards the closer of the two travelers.

"YOU _BITCH!_" The girl is moving wildly, trying to throw off her brother's grip, tears streaming down her face and teeth bared. It's at this point uncertain whether the emotion is real or simply intensified because of the alcohol. "You lost me everything, you hear that? EVERYTHING!"

"I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I don't know you," says the traveler in a strong, feminine voice. She steps out into the light toward the crying ex-attorney, gazing down at her critically. "You must be mistaking me for someone else."

There is a second, when light touches the skin of that face, when Mike can claim with full confidence that he doesn't know this girl, that she is an unknown to him, a waylaid stranger that happened upon the nesting ground for broken dreams. There is a second after that when Mike can blame his scotch, can manage to convince himself that the alcohol is toying with his brain even though he's drunk himself into oblivion so many times that getting delusional on four glasses of scotch would be an embarrassment.

But two seconds pass in the time it takes for one to blink, and Mike can no longer make excuses for himself or his brain as he gazes on the profile of his now ex-wife.

* * *

The girl and her travelling partner have moved in to the new apartment complex across the street and now feel the need to drink to a successful move. Joan, the bartender, pours the now completely silent, wide-eyed Iris a glass of gin as Mike downs his own liquid fire—but he takes it for courage, not to drown out the memories around him.

He takes his seventh scotch, and stands on shaky legs before stumbling his way toward the girl.

"Excuse me." Mike does his best not to slur his works, but he really can't tell how well he's doing. "This may be intrusive, but…have you ever been married?" He pauses slightly. "And, if not, do you know who I am?"

The girl turns, face stoic and rather angry. "…What did you just say to me?"

"…Have you been married?" Mike peers into her eyes. She looks so much like Lina it's scary.

"Let me end your fantasies now by telling you I'm asexual," she replies sourly, eyebrows knitting between her eyes. "And, even if I wasn't, there's no way I'd ever do anything akin to _that_ with you."

Great. Was he too drunk or something? Did he word something wrong? Either way, Mike has to know if this person is another ghost of his past. "Can I at least ask your name?"

He tries to word it as formally as possible to get an answer to his question that isn't some sort of sarcastic comeback, and it seems to work because the girl turns slowly and gives a smirk.

"Drift," she says in a confident voice that seems to convey she's answered Mike's question, which isn't true because the girl who turns back to her rum and cola has in one word left him with more questions and less answers than before.

_Helpless. Clueless._

* * *

Mike's _faux pas_ isn't big enough to stop Drift from returning alone the next night, drinking more watered down rum-and-cola and joining the three girls that always seem to gravitate towards the billiard table. As Jordan walks over another drink, Drift turns and gives a grin, egged on by the others.

"More rum, less cola, please," she says haughtily, turning and laughing with the others.

"That's the spirit," laughs Sunny, patting her hard on the back as they turn and motioning toward Tate. "Go on, Tate, make your shot. Before Andie drags you out of here again." The girl smirks, downing a fourth of her White Russian in one gulp. "Your, um, what's the word…'partner?'"

"You wish," Tate sighs, turning to the last girl—Maya—for support. When she simply shrugs and smiles, Tate turns and glares. "At least I'm not running from my parents and hiding in a bar."

"It's not just my parents I'm running from," Sunny sighs with a wry grin. "Go on, Drift, drink it!"

"D'ya really dare me too?" Drift glances around, and at the nodding of her three new friends, she drinks the entire glass in one go.

Mike turns from Drift and her newfound friends and stares into his own glass—champagne isn't easy to get drunk on and it definitely isn't cheap, but the bubbles fizz down his throat and in his stomach and refuse to settle, and he's still feeling antsy from seeing a girl so similar to Lina (he can tell Iris is too, from the copious amounts of gin she keeps downing), so he figures the feeling in his stomach and the feeling playing on the edge of his mind match relatively well.

"Hey, Joan, more rum and cola!" Sunny laughs. "Turns out the newbie can hold her liquor!"

_Confusing. Revealing._

* * *

She's here again the next day, even more often than some of the regulars come. This time, her friend is back, but while Lizzi's talking to one of the other regulars (a girl Mike doesn't really know that goes by 'Alex'), Drift is sitting with Tish at one of the window-side tables downing glass after glass of alcohol.

"She's joining me in my regular drinking game," laughs Tish when Joan—her old friend—asks. "Today, I made another ten pieces of artwork." She lines up twenty shot glasses on the bar and pushes ten before Drift, who stares at them in wonder. "Drink up. Sake." She laughs bitterly. "A bit of Asian flare—and that's the only Asian thing about me, much to the dismay of my parents."

"Ten pieces?" Drift grabs the first glass and takes it in one gulp, shuddering slightly. "That's good. How many did you sell?"

"A giant fucking goose egg," Tish hiccups, taking five in a row and slamming them down. "Like always. I'm pretty much broke, and it's only thanks to Joan here that I get my free alcohol." Tish raises an eyebrow at the remaining five shots, then pours them all into one giant glass and drinks it in one go. "The fucking starving artist. That's me."

"She usually goes for beer," explains Joan, quickly turning away and sliding a glass of vodka down to Mike. Mike's been feeling a bit more culturally sensitive today, as well. "I guess she wanted to get a bit more incoherent today."

"Damn straight," Tish sighs. While Drift downs the rest of her shots, Tish flags down the bartender and asks for a Long Island Iced Tea. "Every day is a day I want to get more drunk. Today just happens to be the day I act on it."

_Desolate. Hopeless._

* * *

Mike watches helplessly day in and day out as Drift drinks more and more, all the way until Lizzi stops coming and even begins to take on a role like Tate's friend Andie, dragging her out when she's drunk to the point of incoherency.

Today, however, there's a difference—another waterpipe is set up, tall and elegant, beside Devi's usual one. The smell of marijuana permeates through the room more thickly than usual.

Drift has moved on to more illicit substances.

Mike watches as Drift greets Devi eagerly and sits in the same dark, smoky corner. Devi flicks on her trademark lighter (embossed with a picture of the globe) and offers Drift her metallic tongs and a piece of charcoal. Drift grabs it with a shy smile, holding it above the open flame and blowing on it when the coal glowed red before placing it delicately on the foil and taking a large puff, blowing the smoke in a thin stream out of her mouth.

Mike watches her precision, the way she talks familiarly with Devi, the way she doesn't hack or choke or wheeze and takes on the burn and the hazy euphoria with a practiced air. This isn't her first time doing this. This isn't her first time doing drugs with Devi.

He pushes himself away from his third glass of tequila and makes his way over, not quite stumbling as much as last time and waving a hand in front of his face to disperse the thick, foul odor hanging like a cloud in front of him.

"Hey."

Neither Devi nor Drift says a word. There used to be a time, before Devi became a dedicated druggie, when she'd talk regularly about the college courses she was taking and her part-time jobs and whatnot—however, nowadays, she simply sits in the corner, legs crossed and arms open, and hookah on the bartop in front of her. Drift is copying her expression, albeit with a smile that is inches more alert than Devi's.

"Um…Drift, can I speak with you?"

There is a prolonged pause as Drift takes the pipe out of her mouth slowly, as if moving through molasses. "…Sure." She makes no effort to move, an unspoken message saying _anything you have to say to me can be said in front of others._

"Drift…maybe you shouldn't keep coming here."

He says it quickly, like ripping off a band-aid, and the girl recoils in front of him as if indeed she's been subject to ice-cold air on newly healed skin. The pipe falls out of her mouth and dangles limply from the portion of pipe in her hand, and she fixes him with a shaky stare.

"W—what do you mean?"

"Coming here non-stop…it's a bad influence on you."

"You're…one to talk, good sir." Regaining composure, Drift speaks steadily—a bit too steadily, as if purposely exerting herself—as she takes another drag of the drug. "You're not exactly racing in here once a year to escape a b…busy social life."

"Yeah, being here at all brings you down, but you've started smoking with Devi and it's barely been a month." Mike walks forward slightly, and for a second, it's Lina staring up at him through the haze of smoke, eyes half lidded and expression vulnerable. "C'mon, let's get back to our home."

It takes one second for the words to register and another second for the implication of those words to sink in, and Mike knows that the shocked expression spreading across his face is identical to the one he is watching dawn on Drift's.

But two seconds pass in the time it takes one to blink, and the numbing sting in his brain is jolted away by the sharp pain of a hearty slap to the face before, for yet another time in his life, Mike sees the door close behind brown, waving hair and sharp, confident shoulders.

_Misunderstood. Confused._

* * *

Mike knows a losing fight when he sees one, so he gives up. He resumes his visits twice a week instead of every day, and tries not to glance around the corners of the bar for the girl that will be ten times more high than him no matter how much he drinks. He pretends it doesn't sting, losing someone all over again, to a much more dangerous enemy. He tries. He pretends.

It's harder to do that when the stakes are so much more different.

His routine drags on for months, prowling the streets and tending to his carefully placed spot in the unemployment line by day and drinking himself into black, beautiful nothingness by night.

He is looking at the thin film of a nameless wine that coats the bottom of his fifth (_three-hundred forty-second_) cup of the night (_year_) and debating whether to just order the entire bottle when the door crashes open, the bell flying off its place hung on the door hinge. Lizzi is wide-eyed, mouth set and hands shaking, and the entire bar's eyes follow her as she strides over, firmly grabs her friend by the wrist, and tugs the twitching figure out of the bar.

Drift is helpless, trembling and whining slightly, still clawing for that faint swirl of ecstacy-laced smoke that curls around her being and escapes into the night through the door.

It is then that Mike notices that it has been a year, a year of new beginnings and new promises and new dreams that break when they hit the bartop, shatter on the floor in front of them, and are swept up by Jordan's broom and thrown carefully into the metallic waste-bin that is more vomit than anything else.

* * *

It is at this point, still on his fifth wine, that Mike realizes the game of life he is trying to sidestep his way around has changed from a matter of 'can't talk to her' to a matter of 'don't want to talk to her'—he no longer wants to see Lina's face in the midst of a shock of death-laced smoke, peer into Lina's eyes through a thin film of watery incoherency. He doesn't want to face the girl that left him, and he doesn't want to face the girl he's now being forced to leave behind. Not Lina. Not Drift.

He just doesn't want to do anything anymore—maybe sink into his barstool and feel fire run down his throat, a cheap imitation of the flaring jolt of victory.

"Hey there, Mikey."

The barstool next to him is suddenly being occupied, and Mike takes a look to see Snow—the stage name of a stripper at a nearby club who enjoys the members of the opposite sex (and the act itself) that is readily available at a bar like Joan's. She folds her legs and hums, tapping long painted fingernails on the wood. Joan gets the hint and tosses her a canned beer. Snow pops the tab and flicks it toward Mike's head, and he barely sways out of the way.

It's hard to believe, sometimes, that the two are cousins—but in other ways, it's also painfully clear.

"Hiya, Snow," he replies, because she's already told him multiple times to use her 'alibi' in front of the people at the bar and club alike.

"So, I see you've got your eye on someone," she states bluntly. Mike doesn't have to ask how she knows—she sees his mannerisms, and his suddenly increased amount of visits followed by an almost forceful return to his usual regimen is a clear enough indication of discomfort if nothing else. "I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's the person who looks identical to someone you were in love with not long ago."

"It's been years, Snow," he croaks out, making a decision and motioning to Joan to get him the entire bottle of wine.

"Years, pshaw." She grins. "I consider this sort of thing in lifetimes." Her gaze skims around the bar, taking in the fading lifelines of multiple people. "You're born, you live a little, you die. How else do you want to measure human history?"

"Love isn't human history," he replies, taking a swig from the bottle. It's bitter, more bitter than many of the other things he's drank. "It's just _a_ human's history."

"Love's been around for all of human history," Snow retorts. "'Death do us part' is rubbish, and you know that, 'cuz of the afterlife." She pauses and gives a sniff. "If there _is_ an afterlife."

"Aw, c'mon, what would you know about love?" Mike snorts. "Beyond your random escapades, I mean, because we both know those don't count."

"Well, at least I know how to work for what I want," Mike's cousin replies. Her response seems somewhat offended. "All you do is lie around here focusing your eyes on that girl when they're not glued to the bottom of a drink."

"Why would I work for something so out of my league?" Mike sighs. "And not in a good way, either. In a…actually, I don't know what way." He takes a drag of his bottle. "When she first came in, she was so damn pure and…I d'know, _good_, that it was easy to see she was way above me on the ladder." He gazes around. "Way above anyone here on the ladder, really." Another drink. Another curious stare. It's a routine, and, like many others, far too easy to sink into. "And now she's in here more often than me, using and abusing so many different things at so many different times that even I don't know whether I deserve to have to deal with that."

Snow raises an eyebrow and her hand twitches, like she wants to slap him. It wouldn't be a first.

"I'm going to let you in on a secret, Mikey-boy," she says seriously, pulling out a name she hasn't used in years. Mike resists the urge to tell her off for it. "Not one of us deserves to be here, drinking god-knows-what and breathing in that girl's second hand smoke until god-knows-when. The longer people stay here, the more hackneyed they become—all the way until we're not even a face in the crowd, just a pile of wants for things we don't need and needs for the things we want. The difference between people like you and people like me is that I'm hooked to this place." She pauses to wave with her fingertips at a stereotypical beach-blond that's lost his color. "I need it like a drug. Like water. I'll die without a fix." She shrugs, poking Mike on the forehead as she leans forward. "You, on the other hand…remember when I promised to give you the best advice, regardless of anything?"

Mike remembers, that lukewarm summer day too long and too short ago when they promised something that only the naiveté of a child would even dream of upholding.

"I'm going to give it to you now—get out of here." Snow's dark eyes are dead, lifeless, like black lager. "Take yourself, take the people you care about. Don't take anything else from this place. I'd tell you to leave your memories, but the only way to do that is to take the bottle with you. Take the people you love, leave the alcohol behind, and just _run._"

* * *

It is the next day, on the tide of his non-existent glass of liquid courage (_any drink will do, any drink at all_) when Mike makes his way to the barstool five seats down. Drift is there, eyes red-rimmed and straight liquor in its designated spot adjacent to her. Her eyes are downcast, and her hookah is nowhere to be found. Mike would be willing to bet good money (what he has left of it) that Lizzi's hidden it somewhere in the apartment they share.

"Hi," he says, and Drift shoots upright as if a gun were fired at her head.

They stare at each other for a second, and Drift's eyes are still wary and untrusting when Mike moves on, blurting out everything in his nervousness—"go out with me."

Drift's eyes fall back to her glass. That's a routine, too.

"No."

_Abnegation._

"You can say no as many times as you'd like," Mike replies. "I'm not drunk, I'm not insane, and I'm not looking for a cheap lay. All I'm asking for is one date."

Drift is silent for a long, long time, staring at her glass as the clock drags on. Alcohol exchanges like the flow of a river, from bottle to glass, from the devil to the doomed. "Can I ask why?"

"…Um, I—"

"No lies." Her voice is tired but her words come quick. "No lies, half-truths, or omissions. Everything. Or I'm leaving right now." She drinks the liquor in one large gulp, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand and turning to face Mike.

"I was married once."

_Surrender._

"Her name was Lina. If you want to know what she looked like, all you'd need is a mirror."

Drift's eyes flicker hollowly as she motions him on.

"I wasn't the best husband. I drank, though not as much as I do now. Even so, I…"

_Unfairness._

"I…didn't deserve…"

"Bullshit." Drift's voice is still hollow, like wind blowing over the top of an empty bottle. "Everyone deserves what comes to them, no matter what it is, because everyone deserves both the greatest good and the most devastating bad." She shuts her mouth. Waves a hand. Continue.

"…She cheated on me. She was a teacher. She cheated on me with her student aid." Mike swallows, tries to remember what to say and forget what actually happened. "There was an argument. She was so, so incredibly bitter…"

_Bitter. The air is bitter._

"She hired a prosecuting attorney and accused me of marital rape." His voice is becoming increasingly hollow—reaching the same point Drift's is at. "The attorney was made an offer she couldn't refuse. Both of them knew the charge was false, but the prosecutor was so desperate she tried to forge evidence to get it through."

Drift's and Mike's eyes both land, simultaneously, on Iris Jade.

"She was found out." He swallows a lump in his throat that tastes like regret. _Regret. The air._ "The BAR association took her badge, and she can only retake the test in ten years." He shrugged. "We both felt wronged by that girl. We became…friends. I guess."

_Wronged. The air, the people that bask in it._

"My wife got another attorney. The new one got the case through, circumstantial evidence and such." He shrugged. "They took her away from me, gave her all our stuff. My boss fired me. My friends left me. That prosecuting attorney, she found us a bar. The one her brother works at." He gave her a small smile, the story continuing into reality, the storyline leading to the girl wide-eyed and listening to it in front of him. "And I drank here every week, until you and your friend showed up on this doorstep."

"…So why ask me out?" Drift's tone was sour and slightly awed. "Is it because I look like this 'Lina?'"

"…Maybe I'm just in love with a memory, but there's an equally large possibility I'm really in love with _you._" He stands again. He isn't wobbling when he walks, hasn't done so today for the first time in quite a while. "I may be down to my last penny, but I'm willing to try wishing for a better life instead of my next beer. If you'll help me out, that is." He holds out his hand. Drift (not Lina) stares at it. "What do you say?"

* * *

**Epilogue**

Old, wizened people are the only type of people who deserve to go to bars, thinks Mike. They've seen so much of life, they deserve to forget once in a while.

It's this mindset that brings him down that same old road, down to that same old bar just under a decade later.

The door is boarded up and the window blinds are closed—but the sign still says 'CFTBF' in faintly glowing letters, the slogan underneath just as recklessly and honestly promising that any person entering the establishment will 'forget their troubles.'

There's a difference between this Mike and the years-younger Mike that drunk his heart into oblivion almost ten years ago—and that's that this time, he has no troubles to forget.

Neither he nor Drift have touched a drink in quite a while now, come to think of it. The wedding band on his finger and the steady paycheck that arrives month after month in the mail is a blessing each and every time, reminding him that the future holds good alongside evil.

"I miss this place, too."

Mike tilts his head to see Joan—the bartender he used to spill so many troubles to—staring up at the same sign with a muffler wrapped tight around her neck and a smile on her face. In the dim light of the glowing sign, a thin beam of light seems to radiate over her head, a dark halo. "It's been a while since I got rid of it."

"Hey, Joan," Mike grins, and Joan nods her head.

"D'ya know what happened to the others after you left?" Joan clicks her tongue. "I could probably blame you for losing my business. They all saw what happened and went away, one after another." She grins. "Then again, I can't complain." The two stride off, toward the lights of a city that overpowers happy moments all too often. "I've opened up a new restaurant. It's doing well."

"I see." Mike shrugs. "Enlighten me then, oh wise one. What happened?"

"Iris has had her badge back for more than a couple of years now," Joan says, pointing to a nearby newspaper stand. "Surely you've seen her in there—along with Devi, who I'm hearing is her new legal aide."

"Yeah."

"I keep in touch with her, Tish, and Sunny, and that's how I know what happened to everyone." The old bartender pauses, thinking. She has a couple of gray hairs, but her eyes are still bright. "Tate and Andie opened their doors to Maya, and now all three room together. Andie finally got their lazy butts to jobs, so now they live in a house instead of an apartment. With a billiard table, or so I'm told," she adds with a wolfish grin. "Seems they never got rid of that habit."

"Mm." Old habits die hard, Mike wants to say, but more than that he wants to hear more.

"Jordan's trying to become a musician. He keeps pretty good contact with Tish, who seems to have sold quite a lot of paintings since her drunk days." Joan turns to Mike. "I'm assuming you know what happened to Lizzi and Snow."

"She lives next door to us with that girl she used to keep talking with at the bar...her name's Alex." Mike tilts his head. "Snow married a person who managed to fulfill and wean her off her 'needs.' She works as a dance instructor now. By the way, you're missing a person."

"Oh, you mean Sunny?" Joan pauses. "She never reconciled with her parents. She got away with her 'crimes,' though—and no, I won't tell you what they are. She lives alone." Joan looks upwards. "I guess we can't all have happy endings."

"She'll find hers yet," Mike says, feeling conviction and a burst of sympathy for his old friend. "Everyone does, in the end."

"What happened to the old cynic that used to slump on my bar table and search for words to describe how hopeless the air was?" Joan gives a chuckle and a sharp grin. "Speaking of which, I suppose you forgot about finding that word, didn't you?"

"Nope." Mike smirks, glad to one-up the bartender for once. "I gave it a lot of thought, in the months after I left that place. I figured it out—do you want to hear it?"

"Why not?"

"The word…_relinquishment._ Resignation, if you will." Mike, copying Joan's earlier expression, looks up. Snowflakes drift down into his eyes, soft and cold. "We let go of our lives, we let go of our hope. We accept the fact that our fates are out of our control, and try to forget about them, when in fact—"

"—that's just about the worst thing you can do. I know." Joan nods once, eyes stern and smile wide, and Mike thinks that it's all too likely that Joan figured out that word many, many years earlier, somewhere between gazing out at the people she corrupted and pouring a person another cup of their sins. "We've got to rush into them head on, knowing that there's not much we can do to change it all unless we try our hardest—and even then."

"Yeah." Mike nods affirmative, and together they look out, onto the glow of a city that has one less secret to cherish.

* * *

**My favorite as of yet, guys!**

**So, while I'm gone for the next week...have fun!**

_**'Drabble' Wordcount: 5,545 Words**_


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